All posts tagged ‘Stratus Games’

Overview:Off Your Rocker is a party game that emulates the Party Quirks game from the legendary improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? One player takes on the role of “psychiatrist” and the rest of the players, the “patients,” all have a secret trait that they must exhibit. The psychiatrist hopes to guess the patients’ quirks and the patients are trying to impress one another with their answers.

Players: 4-12

Ages: 12 and up

Playing Time: 45 minutes

Retail: $20

Rating: This is that rare party game that combines zany interactivity with a solid yet simple mechanical structure. As a patient, it’s a lot of fun to learn your secret prompt and know that the psychiatrist player doesn’t know it. As the psychiatrist, it can be challenging and hilarious to watch your friends act crazy.

Who Will Like It? Fans of improv and theatresports will love Off Your Rocker, as will anyone who has always dreamed about seeing their friends pretend to be trapped in a bottle. It’s a great family game, especially with kids who love to perform.

Overview: The folks at Stratus Games are no strangers to simple and fun games that get the whole family playing. They’re back again with DiceAFARI, a board game that lets you explore Africa and collect photographs of the exotic animals that live there. The game is on Kickstarter right now and needs backers, otherwise it may not get funded. So read on and see why you really shouldn’t miss out on this awesome game.

Players: 2-4

Ages: 8 and up

Playing Time: 15 minutes

Retail: $20

Rating: Simple, quick, and surprisingly strategic. The dice are colorful and a lot of fun to roll. At such a great price, you’d be nuts to pass over this game.

Who Will Like It? Fans of strategic games with area control and set collection mechanics will enjoy DiceAFARI. If you love rolling dice and you’ve always wanted to go on an African safari (but never took the time to do the things you never have… ahem), you’ll dig it.

Theme

The theme is light. You’re on a safari to Africa and you’re trying to take as many pictures of elephants, lions, gorillas, and giraffes as you can. You move from terrain to terrain on a randomly generated tile-based map, hoping to snap your shots and snag the most lucrative combination of animals. Continue Reading “Bless the Dice Down in Africa With DiceAFARI” »

A few weeks ago, we reviewed Stratus Games’ Launch Pad, a cutthroat game about building rockets, launching them into space, and sabotaging your opponents’ efforts to do the same. I had a lot of fun with it and recommended it for its quick pace and excellent theme.

If you’re interested in grabbing a copy of Launch Pad but haven’t made it over to your friendly local game store to buy it, look no further. Stratus Games and GeekDad are teaming up to give away a free copy of the game. All you have to do is answer a few trivia questions!

The contest will run for two three weeks, ending on 8/30/2011 9/7/2011 (we extended it!). We’ll notify the winner via email, so be sure to enter a valid address. And remember: you earn 5 extra entries for each friend you refer to the contest! Good luck!

A couple weeks ago, we reviewed Stratus Games’ Launch Pad, a cutthroat game about building rockets, launching them into space, and sabotaging your opponents’ efforts to do the same. I had a lot of fun with it and recommended it for its quick pace and excellent theme.

If you’re interested in grabbing a copy of Launch Pad but haven’t made it over to your friendly local game store to buy it, look no further. Stratus Games and GeekDad are teaming up to give away a free copy of the game. All you have to do is answer a few trivia questions!

The contest will run for two three weeks, ending on 8/30/2011 9/7/2011 (we extended it!). We’ll notify the winner via email, so be sure to enter a valid address. And remember: you earn 5 extra entries for each friend you refer to the contest! Good luck!

Overview: Ever wanted to build a rocket? Ever wanted to send your fellow rocketeers plummeting back down to Earth where all their hopes and dreams are dashed to shreds? Then Launch Pad is perfect for you.

Released by Stratus Games, who brought us the simple-yet-highly-customizable Gold Mine, this game is a fun and competitive card game where you and your buddies/rivals construct as many spacebound rockets as possible. The one with the most rockets in the launch zone wins. The only problem? Your opponents are constantly trying to sabotage your efforts! It’s as if Aperture Science and Black Mesa were competing with one another during the space race of the 1960′s, and it’s deliciously devious.

Players: 2 to 4

Ages: 10 and up

Playing Time: 30 to 60 minutes

Retail: $24.95

Rating: Great theme, fast-paced, and highly competitive

Who Will Like It? If you’ve always wanted to be an astronaut and have a mean competitive streak, you will blast off with Launch Pad.

Gold Mine, released by Stratus Games last fall, is a tile-based game where players move around a user-generated board collecting gold nuggets. It’s a great game for children who have little to no board game experience, but it may fall a little flat for adults who are regulars in the lands of Catan and Puerto Rico.

You play the part of a miner and you’re trying to snatch up a set number of gold nuggets before the other players. First, the initial board is laid out by choosing tiles at random. Then, each player takes turns rolling a die, moving their fun little miner pawn accordingly, and if you end up on a nugget, it’s yours.

At the beginning of the game, there will only be a few nuggets available. So if you choose not to roll and move, you can instead draw a tile and place it on the board. Draw a nugget tile and you can put it close to yourself. Draw something else and put it near your opponents.

There are also “challenges,” where you can directly interfere with the other miners by either stealing a nugget or sending a colony of bats after them (which lets you move the player away from valuable nuggets). Both of these options are resolved with a best of three die roll-off.

Playing with a group of adults, we all felt that, rules as written, the game was nothing special. Aside from laying tiles, it’s about as complicated as any roll-to-move style game. Early on, we all moved to the edges of the board where we placed tiles, hoping to find our own nuggets. The challenges were fairly boring, too, given that success is entirely up to chance. There is very little strategy involved in this game.

That being said, I think children as young as five would have a great time with Gold Mine. Most kids are used to stationary boards, and the tile-laying mechanic will be fun and new to them. It beats the corn-syrup out of Candyland or Chutes and Ladders in every possible way, from the board to the components. Last time I checked, you couldn’t send a mass of nasty bats at your opponents in those games.

We did discover later that the game is something of a blank slate for variation. The Stratus Games website has 14 optional rules that expand and complicate the base game, and many of these address some of our complaints. Even as we played, we found ourselves muttering, “If only the game did this.” Turns out, if you want it to do this, you can just make up your own rules. This is something a lot of board game players do naturally, but with Gold Mine, the invitation is out in the open. House rules do make this game better and you have a whole slew of them to choose from.